Friday, December 10, 2010

X-Men: Nation X TPB (part 3) Nation X 1-4

While I appreciate the value in getting a full limited series after such high-quality stories from the core Uncanny title, this trade ends more weakly than it began because of the nature of the Nation X series. It's a collection of short stories featuring different mutants living on Utopia, and the creative teams vary wildly in their ability. Some of the stories stand out as being particularly entertaining (like Doop, Iceman, and Colossus) but then there are a few that are almost unreadable. Some of the stories are packed with manga-style artwork and dialogue, pretty much a guarantee for me to skip.

I like that there is an outlet for new creators to cut their teeth writing established characters, and I know that experienced writers sometimes like revisiting old concepts (like Peter Milligan and Mike Allred coming back for Doop). But I'm afraid that I would probably prefer books like this getting collected separately, keeping the price tag down for this trade as a whole .The book cost 30 bucks, and I would have been happier not getting this limited and paying ten bucks less.

The art is inconsistent, as is always the case with anthology books. I was particularly impressed with Harvey Tolibao's White Queen story. His art can be anatomically inconsistent, but everything looked pretty solid here.